


You Must Be A Christmas Tree (You Light Up The Room)

by Shr0ud



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-11 02:17:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12925203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shr0ud/pseuds/Shr0ud
Summary: Kara and Lena go ice skating; Lena gets caught in the moment and every moment thereafter.





	You Must Be A Christmas Tree (You Light Up The Room)

**Author's Note:**

> Decided not to watch "The Christmas Episode" and wrote this instead. Cheers.
> 
> Title from Sufjan Stevens’ Barcarola (You Must Be A Christmas Tree), a poignant “non-Christmas” Christmas song that is most definitely the mood for this story (and the reason why a story set during Hanukkah has the word Christmas in the title). I grew up celebrating both holidays, so there you have it.

 

They're ice skating at Stafford Park, and it’s only that the children have bells on their skates and the tree is prim and golden behind them, Kara's warm breath condensing into clouds from her lips.

  
It's only that everything feels as warm as a Christmas light, though the weather is cold for a National City December.

  
It's only that Lena falls, upends herself right in front of God or whoever watches over quaint holiday trips to the pop-up ice skating rink.

  
There are times that she has to remind herself not to kiss her friend, not to just grab her pink cheeks and press their mouths together for a perfect moment.

  
But she's drunk on Hanukkah cheer (they'd just lit the first candle at dinner, and the reverence in Kara's face made her hopeful without knowing what for), and she doesn't have half a mind to remind herself of anything.

  
Kara bends down, her wool mittens scratch at Lena's exposed wrist.  She's smiling with such needless care, and God of all ice skating rinks, instead of just taking that hand, Lena stretches up and presses a kiss to the dimpled corner of Kara's mouth.

  
And it's like someone has lobbed her in the head.  Sounds become garbled and tinny. The world plays around them like a mechanical toy, little girls twirling with their hands clasped, the flash of parents' cameras, all of the metallic bows billowing in the whipped up wind.

  
"Lena?"

  
She tastes coins, salty and thick running over her top lip.  Kara's hands go to her nose, a kind but misguided thought, and Lena scrambles up without taking purchase on Kara's pea-coated arms.

  
There are raised bleachers that line the rink for spectators, and Lena skates towards them with both hands over her face.  By the time she's composed herself enough to hear sounds like a normal person might, Kara is hurrying back with wads of thick brown paper towels, too many to reasonably carry or use.

  
"I'm sorry."  Kara's face can only be described as crestfallen, her mouth turned down, eyes squinting at her mittens.

  
Lena sniffs and feels blood run down the back of her throat.  She speaks through the buffer of at least ten paper towels.

  
"What are you sorry for?"

  
Kara shrugs, pulling her cap off by its fat pompom.  Her hair is staticy and wild at the crown, but the decorations around them light it up like a halo.  She leans a shoulder into Lena's as a gesture rather than a resting spot and says:

  
"I should've caught you."

  
Blood is heavy on Lena's tongue.  She wants to tell Kara that she shouldn't say things like that, that she shouldn't look so sincere and loving, she shouldn't blush when someone gives her a dumb, chaste kiss.  People might assume any number of things.

  
"That's sweet, but I'm okay. The nosebleed is... Incidental.  It happens."

  
It happened the first time she kissed any living soul, Charles Coulter at the Montmount Boy’s Prep social with pineapple punch still wet on her lips.

  
Her first year at MIT, her Intro to Robotics TA with the deepest brown freckles wrapped her hand around Lena's forearm and said she had a brilliant mind.

  
Backstage at her first TED talk, Jack told her he loved her and she panicked, said "love? During _this_ administration?"

  
The taste of blood now has a heady association.

  
Against all sage wisdom, Kara takes some of the bloody napkins from her hands and tuts like Lena imagines Eliza might.  She watches as Kara steps down the bleachers with an admirable grace, disappearing into a cluster of people and buildings.

  
The blood stops all at once. She thinks of the last year, how she had started it fielding some sandy-haired reporter’s valiant grabs for her attention and is now ending it desperate for so much as a lean-in from that same person.  It’s enough to make your nose bleed, she guesses.

  
When Kara comes back, she’s holding styrofoam cups of something, her nose and lips flushed from the rising steam.

  
 “Hot chocolate?”  She holds a cup out, and Lena watches the little reconstituted marshmallows float on the surface.  She hasn’t had hot chocolate since she was old enough to drink coffee, probably.

  
 “Thank you.”  Lena pulls off a glove and grabs the cup with her bare hand, but it’s hotter than she expected and there’s a tremble to her whole arm that is obviously, clearly from the weather.  

  
The cup slips from her hand in theatrical slow motion.  She braces herself for scalding liquid on her knees, but she’s only met with a swift movement from Kara and the smallest slosh.

  
“Oh my god.”  She laughs, puts her hand on her own cheek and squeezes her eyes closed until they hurt for just a second.

  
“I at least had to catch your hot chocolate, right?”

  
Kara snorts at her own joke before taking a long sip from her cup.  She looks embarrassed, Lena thinks, but she can’t for the life of her imagine why.

  
“My hero.” Lena leans into Kara, because she could wait her entire life, some things you just have to take for yourself.  She hesitates once, twice before kissing Kara’s cheek, a conscious and present act.  Kara promptly drops Lena’s hot chocolate.

  
“Shoot!”

  
It falls between the seats, hitting every beam on its way down.  Kara’s mouth is open, her glasses magnifying the horror in her eyes.

  
“It’s okay, Kara.  I’m not really much of a hot chocolate girl, anyway.”

  
On the far side of the rink, a group of onlookers have gathered to watch a man propose.  She hears a strangled, pitiful noise come out of the woman’s mouth and Lena, a sympathetic crier, has to look away.

  
“Come on, it’s a perfect night for it.  Pretend it’s coffee.”  Kara is now shoving her own cup in Lena’s general direction, not getting as close as she might have five minutes earlier.  There’s a faint pink mark on the rim from her tinted chapstick.

  
Lena takes it and drinks from that same spot, pressing her lips to it like she’d seen people take communion in church as a child.  The drink is sweet and a little bitter all at once.

  
“Good, right?”

  
Kara’s eyelashes are long and light and beat against her cheeks like moth wings, waiting innocently for Lena’s response.

  
She nods, handing Kara back her cup.  They sit in silence, passing the drink back and forth until there’s nothing left but marshmallow sludge.  Kara clears her throat before she taps it into her mouth, and Lena tries not to grin.

  
“What’s your favorite Christmas song?”  

  
Lena raises an eyebrow at Kara, whose family is Jewish, though she can’t be sure what she celebrated before she was adopted.

  
“Christmases in my family were spent at a ski resort in Gstaad.  We never did all the magical stuff, no Santa or anything.  Heaven forbid we experience any childish joy, right?”

  
There are several looks Kara gives her when she speaks about her family, and a small part of her hates every single one.

  
“We certainly didn’t listen to Christmas music.  My father would occasionally take us to church, though, and I always loved the – what is it?  The one that talks about flaming tongues?  I loved the dramatic songs.”

  
 Kara’s mouth turns up into a familiar smile, one that Lena feels in foolish places. She shivers, slipping her glove back on her hand.

  
 “Jeremiah wasn’t Jewish.  I think he sort of let Eliza take the holiday reigns, but he would always listen to K-100 in the car with me, you know, _All Christmas, All Month Long!_  My favorite was the fun stuff, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree and all that.  I always wondered why Jewish music was so somber.  Now, I prefer it.  The only thing I like about Christmas are the trees.”

  
“The trees?”  Lena looks at the empty hot chocolate set on the bleacher in front of them.  Her lipstick mark is the only one visible, Kara never having rotated the cup.  When she looks back up, she can see the dull red residue on the inside of Kara’s lips.

  
“Yeah.  They’re beautiful.  They look like a sky full of stars.”

  
The tree is set at the head of the rink, all white lights, so many that they must be wrapped around each individual branch.  Lena had never considered stars, but maybe it makes sense, maybe it’s like galaxies infinitely stacked on top of each other.

  
Kara sidles closer, her elbow coming to rest in the soft crook of Lena’s arm.  Their hands are close enough to touch, but they don’t.  The skaters make countless circuits before either of them speak again.

  
“Do you ever feel small seconds where you’re completely untethered from the past?  All the experiences that have ever shaped you as a person.  And you don’t know anything, like how to even walk or say words, but it feels okay?”

  
Kara’s lips part at the question.  Lena almost gets mad at how easily pretty her face looks, each plane smooth and reflecting light.  When Kara turns to look Lena in the eye, she’s unprepared for the moment.  She thinks of the couple from earlier, rings that symbolize unbreakable and infinite things.

  
“That’s weird,” Kara’s fingers come and touch the rim of her glasses before they rest back down on her lap.  “That’s exactly how I feel right now.”

  
If there was ever a time to kiss her in full, right on the mouth with no mistaking about the intent, Lena guesses it would be now.  Kara’s holding a breath, she can tell, her shoulders are raised and her arms are tight against her sides.

  
If there isn’t an invisible string between them, tugging at her rib cage, her collarbones, then she’s not sure what the feeling is in her chest.  She ignores it, puts both hands on the edge of her seat and grips hard enough to feel the cold metal through her leather gloves.

  
Kara deflates in front of her eyes.  Lena watches her look back at the sights in front of them; the bright ice, the deep and impervious green beyond all the bustle.

  
“I’m glad you’re here, Lena.”

  
“Yeah,” Lena pauses, looks out at the rink for anything to distract the quiver in her chin.  She sees nothing but joyful people, smiling and rosy cheeked.  She remembers the feeling of her heart beating in her throat as Supergirl begged her to climb.  “Yeah, me too.”

 

 

  
Lena declines her invite to Alex’s for the last night of Hanukkah.  She’s spent the last week writing stupid, awful things on napkins, in the notes on her phone, in the margins of meeting agendas.

  
_It’s only that you look at me like you_ _–_

  
_It’s only that I feel you, at all times, like the sun, and_ _–_

  
_It’s only that_ _–_

  
She calls Sam.  They drink vodka tonics like full-fledged grownups and watch Ruby practice a dance routine for one of her classes.  They both know better than to ask the other what’s wrong.

  
Sam and Ruby have a small tree that’s sparsely covered with colored lights and homemade ornaments.  There’s a mother of pearl star on top, and she thinks of Kara, the blues and whites and reds of her smiling face.

  
“Have you ever thought Christmas lights looked like stars?”

  
Sam’s mouth twists up, her nails clinking on the side of her glass.  She regards her little tree in all its sincerity.

  
“I guess so.  I guess you could say that.”

  
Lena nods in agreement, places her half-full glass down and announces she’s leaving.  Sam doesn’t seem put out by it.

  
“Thanks for having a drink with me on a Wednesday night.”  Lena smiles in the doorway, pulling her purse over her shoulder as Sam hooks an arm around her and squeezes.

  
“No problem.  Say hi to Kara for me.”

  
Lena stutters, starts to protest, but Ruby is calling her mom away and she’s not even sure what she’s meant to say, so she turns and makes her way home.

  
She’s already in bed, fuzzy socks making her feet sweat under the covers when she gets a call from the gate house.  The guard lets her know that she has a visitor, and she can tell by the smile evident in his voice that it’s Kara.  

  
Lena stands in front of the full length mirror beside her bed, too close to really assess what she should or should not present to her friend.  She’s in old threadbare pajamas and her face is scrubbed and just the littlest bit splotchy.  She breathes in deeply and applies some mascara for no good reason at all, pinches the tops of her cheeks.

  
When she gets to the door, Kara is dressed in the softest, bluest sweater Lena has ever seen, her hair pulled back in a french braid that has fallen around her face throughout the course of the night.  Lena immediately regrets not putting more makeup on.

  
There’s a red-topped Tupperware in Kara’s hands, held out like an offering for an altar.

  
“I brought donuts.  I mean, we made them.  Alex and me.  Or, Alex and I.  And I?  That’s right, right?  It's been a long day.”

  
Lena’s mouth twists against her teeth, trying to temper the ridiculous smile she’s sure will embarrass Kara.  She scratches at the back of her neck, tilting her head to the side.

  
“That’s very kind of you, Kara.  Is that what brings you all the way out to Westwood?”

  
Kara walks in as Lena steps aside for her, making her way towards the kitchen without fanfare.  She responds to Lena over her shoulder, their gazes never meeting.

  
“I just wanted to check in, you were so excited about tonight and then – I don’t know, I was sure you’d show up.”

  
They round the threshold to the kitchen and Kara is already going about the room in a familiar way, opening cabinets and pulling down dessert plates.  She hesitates in front of the espresso machine and seems to mull over making some before her shoulders fall.  Lena stands in the middle of the kitchen, her feet cold against the tile, watching Kara place two poorly shaped donuts glistening with cinnamon and sugar onto a plate.

  
“I just wanted to make sure everything was okay.  I know how hard the holidays can be for you, and–”

  
“They’re not hard.  Really, they’re not.”

  
She finds her fingers trembling towards the crumpled up napkins in her purse, maybe they aren’t the best draft, but she feels she needs a script to even look at Kara’s face right now.

  
There’s sugar all over Kara’s fingers as she gently pushes Lena’s plate to the far end of the island between them.

  
“I probably should've asked you if you wanted some or not.”

  
“Well, I can always count on you to eat them if I don’t.”

  
Kara rolls her eyes, but her cheeks are already pink from the cold.  Lena picks up a donut and tears off a piece.  It tastes like the funnel cake from the one and only time Lex took her to the fair.

  
“Very good.  A little too good.”  Sighing, she places the donut back on the plate.  She holds her hands up and considers licking her fingers, but grabs a dish rag instead.

  
“You’re sure you’re okay?”

  
Lena’s breath stops in her throat, and she tries to swallow down whatever is holding it back.  She tries to remember what that notepad doc on her laptop says, something about exploring new territory, wanting to step through a precipice but being unable to lift your foot.

  
“Yeah. I just...I, um, I can’t lift my foot?”  She digs sharp crescents into her palms.  Kara looks panicked, already coming around the island and bending down like she’s got a medical degree and someone just asked if there's a doctor in the house.

  
“No, no. I’m… I’m sorry, that didn’t make any sense.”

  
When Kara comes back to her full height she’s close, close enough that Lena can see the beating of her pulse at the hollow of her throat.

  
“Kara, I just wanted to apologize for–”

  
Kara moves closer, the kind of close that’s reserved for dentist appointments and looking for an eyelash in someone’s eye.  It’s impossible not to match her gaze, which is open and so insanely tender.

  
“For kissing me. Right?”

  
Lena swallows again, mentally cursing herself for any movement at all.  She slowly nods.

  
Fingers paw at her wrist for a second before letting go.  The LEDs in the room wash them in cold, blue light, and suddenly Lena wishes for incandescence, the warm glow of a fire.  Turning off the lights entirely would probably be best.

  
“You don’t need to apologize.”

  
“Why?  Why don’t I?”

  
Kara’s tongue peeks out and wets her lips, a strange act for someone that looks sufficiently hydrated, and presses forward, her lips veering at the last second to sit soft and demure at the corner of Lena’s mouth.

  
It’s a clocked second, maybe two, and then she’s moving back into her own space, her hands coming to rub at her forearms.  Lena feels little sugar granules stuck to the edge of her lip, but doesn’t dare lick them away.

  
A brave smile spreads wide over Kara’s face.

  
“I, um, I gotta go?  I promised Alex I’d come back.  We watch The Sound of Music every year, and we’re still on the intermission, so…”

  
She stills, palms flat against the front of her thighs.  The look in her eye and the night itself feels teeming with the possibility of miracles, eternal flames roiling and painful to touch.

  
Kara’s hand is warmer than expected when Lena grabs it, her shoulder much higher, her mouth so far away.  When her lips cover Kara’s she realizes that she can’t take it back, she can’t unwind the moment, can’t tell herself this is what friends do.

  
When Kara smiles against her mouth, it all becomes easy to ignore.

  
The kiss (can she call it that, all three hearty seconds of mouth to mouth?) ends clumsily, with Lena stepping back and Kara’s eyes still closed, her lips still pressed into a smile.

  
Lena has never believed in miracles.  Each moment of her life is hard-fought, every step the result of vital, painful efforts to exist.  Miracles are unscientific, moony things, a lie as good as Santa Claus.  

  
Kara opens her eyes and they’re unafraid, as lambent and gentle as they've ever been.  Lena thinks of all her notes, all the scripted speeches lying unused.  If miracles are real, they're simply endurance; a light that never, ever goes out.


End file.
